---

Hey October! Have you seen September? Where did it go?

---

---

There will be laughter

It has been a minute and you might have been wondering if we wandered off into the yonder never to write again.  No, it’s just life.  I know you can relate because so many of you have also been going through some things.  

First, let’s just say that we had gone off the grid for more reasons than one, well before life took a detour.  It turns out that August and September, well, we aren’t sure where they went.  One minute we were planning and preparing for late summer and the next minute fall had arrived. Whatever the reasons, we are back and we are ready to talk about all the books, things we love, laughter and of course, upcoming adventures.

You know, it really doesn’t matter the reason; illness, accident, injury, wedding or funeral, when we all get together eventually there will be laughter.  All situations need some kind of comedy relief.  It’s just how we cope with life.  Our family can sit vigil with the best of them, cry until our eyes are swollen shut, be solemn for hours on end, but at some point one of us will crack and then there will be no stopping the laughter regardless of how inappropriate it might be. 

---

Wrapping up our Summer Book Club!

Well, you’ve had a lot of extra time to get your reading done, so how did you do?  Were you able to get through several books?  All of them?  I read a lot, but I still managed to skip two of the reads.  G read them and gave them a thumbs up, so I might have to circle back to those.

The final books I read for the summer were The Getaway Girls and The Grace Kelly Dress.  They were both light reads, but one was definitely more entertaining than the other one.

Let’s start with my review of the least entertaining.

---

Twinkly lights

A month or so ago, I saw an article that said people who decorate early for Christmas are happier. I didn’t read the article, of course, since I had all the info I needed from the headline, right?! I promptly sent a screenshot of it to my sisters. Two people who are most likely to sneak Christmas decorations out before the Jack-o-Lantern candle is fully extinguished on October 31. Dia de Los Muertos be damned, these girls skip directly to Christmas and give a subtle nod to Thanksgiving, but it’s just an excuse to carbo-load on the way to their main event.

They both responded as I imagined, quickly and with a smug agreement. 

But that headline stuck in my head because, to date, I have yet to read the article. I may be basing this entire scenario on faulty data that was cooked up by the North Pole but nonetheless, I pondered it.

---

Being flexible & focused

Since my last race at the tail end of July, I had clear goals for the remainder of the year: to build aerobic endurance and overall strength. I have doubled down on zone 2 training and committed to that slow practice of building the capacity to run longer and faster in a lower heart rate zone. In theory, it makes perfect sense and seems like a reasonable goal to work toward. In reality, it’s painstaking and patience-testing. It’s hard to run slow, and sometimes even have to walk to keep my heart rate in the range I want. I consistently have to remind myself I am training my heart quite literally to stay in a certain range. It’s not unlike teaching a puppy to stay; it requires repetition and fortitude. 

Just like training our bodies or puppies, there are rules. There are rules to everything. Having parameters, however, doesn’t preclude the presence of disarray. That has been life since we were last arriving in your inbox. We have been living by the rules of chaos. The unexpected has become commonplace.

“Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.”

~ Buddha